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Inside Out: A Very Short Review

There’s a lovely long tradition in the arts of personifying the things in our heads. The Muses are how the Greeks did it, and there is a literary theory that when Odysseus has a conversation with Athena the poet is just trying to show how Odysseus is thinking. And we all remember the 1972 Woody Allen movie Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask), right? In which the lust-crazed man is revealed to be steered by a number of people who sit behind his eyes.

So you all know the gimmick of Inside Out — all the action happens between the ears of a girl named Riley, whose life is turned upside down when the ‘rents uproot the family and move from Minnesota to San Francisco. But what a creative and charming gimmick this is! Riley’s emotions battle it out for control, and until they learn to work together their girl is in real danger.

The real fun for the adult is when the ‘camera’ goes into the minds of others. Everybody has their emotional team, running things, and it’s hysterical. Dogs, cats, the pizza girl — the coolest girl in class’s Sad avatar moans, “It’s so exhausting to be cool!” Endless enjoyments to be had in this witty and smart movie, which is a fine addition to the Pixar stable.

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The ebook version of my novel How Like a God is now available from Book View Cafe. And it is available now in an audio book edition which is read by Bronson Pinchot!

Author

About Brenda Clough

Brenda W. Clough spent much of her childhood overseas, courtesy of the U.S. government. Her first fantasy novel, The Crystal Crown, was published by DAW in 1984. She has also written The Dragon of Mishbil (1985), The Realm Beneath (1986), and The Name of the Sun (1988). Her children’s novel, An Impossumble Summer (1992), is set in her own house in Virginia, where she lives in a cottage at the edge of a forest.
Her novel How Like a God, available from BVC, was published by Tor Books in 1997, and a sequel, Doors of Death and Life, was published in May 2000. Her latest novels from Book View Cafe include Revise the World (2009) and Speak to Our Desires. Her novel A Most Dangerous Woman is being serialized by Serial Box. Her novel The River Twice is newly available from BVC.